Telemarketing Practices

If you are receiving calls or texts from a telemarketer, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) protects you from the practices listed below. If you believe your rights have been violated you should file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Rules a telemarketing agency must follow:

If you subscribe to CALLER ID, you should know when a telemarketer is calling you: telemarketers are required to transmit Caller ID information and can not block their numbers.

Telemarketers must ensure that predictive dialers abandon no more than three percent of all calls placed and answered by a person. A call will be considered “abandoned” if it is not transferred to a live sales agent within two seconds of the recipient’s greeting. As a result, you are less likely to run to answer the phone only to find silence or the “click” of the calling party disconnecting the line.

Telephone solicitation calls to your home before 8 am or after 9 pm are prohibited.

Anyone making a telephone solicitation call to your home must provide his/her name, the name of the entity on whose behalf the call is being made, and a telephone number or address at which you may contact that entity.

When to file a complaint:

In addition to complaints alleging violations of the national Do Not Call list, you may also file a complaint against a telemarketer who is calling for a commercial purpose (e.g., not charitable organizations) IF:

The telemarketer calls before 8 AM or after 9 PM; OR

The telemarketer leaves a message, but fails to leave a phone number for you to be removed from their call list; OR

You receive a telemarketing call from a company that you have previously requested not call you; OR

The telemarketing firm fails to identify itself; OR

You receive a pre-recorded commercial message from someone with whom you have not given permission to call you.

Reference and additional information on the TCPA regulation can be found here.